Everything is Illuminated

(Liev Schreiber, 2005)

This is the story of a strangely obssessive American being helped by Ukrainians to find the village his grandfather came from. Even though the plot is essentially quite simple, I had a really hard time following it. One contributing factor was that throughout the opening scenes, I found it impossible to concentrate on anything other than the fact that Elijah Wood’s face appears to be made entirely from some type of pale, smooth plastic. A compounding factor was that the relevance of the plot comes into play only during the film’s serious moments, and since these are both sickeningly over-sentimental and downright tedious, my attention found itself wandering. Thankfully, the serious moments comprise only about 80-90% of the film. The rest is pure comedy. And it’s hilarious. Granted, the source of mirth boils down to the presence of two simple items: (1) a Ukrainian who speaks English in a comedic way; and (2) an amusing dog. But still, funny English and funny dogs are comedy gold, so this is no reason to complain. It’s just unfortunate that the serious bits don’t cohere with the comedy (I don’t know whether the original book does a better job). It’s like someone decided to remake Road Trip and Schindler’s List as one film. Or like one of those inappropriately weighty scenes in a US sitcom, where we’re all supposed to learn a valuable moral lesson (but what we’re really doing is wondering why the jokes suddenly dried up). This misfiring mixture of comedy and seriousness also makes it difficult to interpret certain characters. A woman who appears towards the end of the film lives in an isolated house stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes containing the remains of a village exterminated by the Nazis during the war. The pompous, holier-than-thou atmosphere of the ensuing scenes suggests that we are to perceive her as a very wise and knowing old soul, with a deep connection to the truly valuable aspects of life. But had she appeared as a character in any other film with such a high incidence of comedy, someone would have turned up and said “Come on, love, this really isn’t healthy. Let’s throw away some of this shit and get you out and about. You really ought to de-clutter. Have you read this book?”

Everything is Illuminated @ IMDb (UK)